September 2017

A resident of the city of Manila helps clean up a creek to remove garbage that clogs drainage and waterways. (Photo: Justine E. Letargo/World Bank)

Metro Manila -- my current home -- is a metropolis of extraordinary contrast. Referred to as the National Capital Region, it is the workhorse of the country, housing about 12.8% of the total population and producing about 38% of national GDP. Metro Manila is a key contributor to the country’s dynamic and vibrant economy, which has been among the fastest growing in East Asia in recent years. With glittering high rise buildings, a Starbucks on seemingly every corner, and bustling commerce wherever you look, one could be lulled into thinking that the citizens of Metro Manila all have a comfortable life.

Two years ago, I visited a village in Rudaki, a hilly district located to the south of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. It lies about forty kilometres from the capital, but it feels like a thousand kilometres away. On our drive up a hill, we saw women carrying buckets of water from a nearby spring. Moving further up, we saw children bathing and animals drinking from the same river. Once in the village, it was clear that life is largely shaped by water scarcity—the backyards were filled with pots and buckets, fuel and stoves for boiling water, and pit latrines that were no longer used because of lack of water. Although we could spot remnants of a once-functional water supply network, people living there had not had access to piped water for at least two decades. Without it, they were only able to practice the most basic forms of sanitation and hygiene.
A community in Rudaki district, Tajikistan.
Photo credit: World Bank team.

The conditions we witnessed in Rudaki were harsh, but not rare. Located on the western tip of the Himalayas, Tajikistan is a country blessed with large fresh water resources in its lakes, rivers, and glaciers. Yet, access to safe drinking water and sanitation connected to a functioning sewer system is lacking, particularly for rural residents and the poor. Much of the existing infrastructure was built during the Soviet era and has not been upgraded for decades. Tajikistan is one of the few countries outside Africa that did not meet the Millennium Development Goal on drinking water and basic sanitation. Because poor water and sanitation conditions, together with poor nutrition and care, are key determinants of childhood stunting, Tajikistan’s childhood stunting rates remain high. Recent estimates indicate that in Tajikistan more than one in five children under the age of five are stunted and will not reach their full potential as adults.

In a new report, Glass Half Full: Poverty Diagnostic of Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Conditions in Tajikistan, we document the realities of Tajikistan’s WASH-deprived population. Our analysis builds on one of the largest data collection efforts of its kind – including national surveys of households and schools, water quality tests, ethnographic work, and case studies of existing WASH projects. It also includes poverty mapping and analysis of other secondary data, including a UNICEF nutrition survey that shared a subsample with our WASH survey.

We face global challenges on an unprecedented scale: climate change, natural disasters, poverty, water scarcity, food insecurity, global displacement, conflict and violence. These are not the kinds of challenges that will go away on their own—they feed off one another and flourish. The world is responding with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which lay out a road map to building a more inclusive, peaceful and prosperous world—a better world.

It was ten years ago, right before the global crisis when Lehman Brothers had not collapsed, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had not been placed into conservatorship. For debt managers, the markets were less volatile and the future was less uncertain. In Turkey we were dealing with the implementation of the post-crisis reform agenda.

One day, I got an invitation from my son’s eighth-grade teacher to speak at the school’s “careers day” which aims educate children on different types of jobs. I accepted the invitation but I was a little worried because, as a debt manager I have a “different type of job” that was not necessarily an “exciting” one.

Around the world, development financial institutions help to promote economic growth, support social development and alleviate poverty.
Photo: bigstock/Elena Larina
Are national development financial institutions (DFIs) still relevant? What are the critical factors that make these institutions succeed? What are concrete examples of sound, well-administered and innovative DFIs? Why do they still remain in business in countries with large and sophisticated financial systems? How can we assess their economic and social impact? Have our views on DFIs evolved in the past decades?

“Glasses askew and gray hair tousled, Scott Rozelle jumps into a corral filled with rubber balls and starts mixing it up with several toddlers”. So begins a feature in Science on Scott’s experiment in progress on parenting and early childhood education in China…including the challenges of keeping a control group in this setting “Rozelle says that when he sees kids in the randomly selected control villages “I often want to take them in my arms and move them to the treatment villages””.

In recent decades, income inequality has risen in most of the developed world and many developing countries. There are plenty of reasons to be worried about income inequality, as it often leads to unequal life opportunities, exacerbates disparities in health and life expectancy, and jeopardizes social unity.

While most of research work on inequality tends to focus on the poor, a recent World Bank Group survey set out to explore how the opinion leaders—who are often economically better-off—perceive the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

The survey interviewed more than 10,000 key opinion leaders[1] in fifty-two developing countries to find out 1) how concerned they are about income inequality, and 2) whether they perceived a link between equality of opportunity and poverty reduction.

Let’s take a look at the key findings.

Income inequality

The survey data show that majorities of opinion leaders in all but two countries (Uzbekistan and Belarus) perceived the gap between the rich and the poor as “a very big” or “moderately big problem” in their countries.

Deepening connectivity and economic linkages between India and Bangladesh will be critical for the success of India’s ‘Act East’ policy.

Here are five priority areas that have the potential to change the economy of Northeast India:

1. Transport Connectivity

After 1947, Northeast (NE) India has had to access the rest of India largely via the “Chicken’s Neck” near Siliguri, greatly increasing travel times. Traders travel 1600 km from Agartala (Tripura) to Kolkata (West Bengal) via Siliguri to access Kolkata port. Instead, they can travel less than 600 kms to reach the same destination via Bangladesh, or even better, travel only 200 km to access the nearby port of Chittagong in Bangladesh.

This is set to change as close cooperation between Bangladesh and India (including various ongoing initiatives such as the transshipment of Indian goods through Bangladesh’s Ashuganj port to Northeast India, expanding of rail links within Northeast India and between the two countries, the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement) can dramatically reduce the cost of transport between Northeast India and the rest of India.

The resultant decline in prices of goods and services can have a strong impact on consumer welfare and poverty reduction in the Northeast. Such cooperation also opens up several additional possibilities of linking India with ASEAN via Myanmar.

Moving forward, expanding direct connectivity between NE India and the rest of India via Bangladesh, while giving Bangladesh similar access to Nepal and Bhutan via India, is critical.

2. Digital Connectivity

Broadband connectivity of 10 gbps is now being provided from Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to Tripura and beyond, to help improve the speed and reliability of internet access in NE India. Bangladesh has the capacity to provide more.